Table 2.

Anticancer activity of antibiotics with their mechanisms of action*

S.No.	Antibiotics	Type of Cancer Cell	Mode of Anticancer Activity	Mechanism of Action	Ref
1	Salinomycin	―――	Anti-proliferative	Kills CSCs	54
		Lung cancer cells	Suppression of self-renewal abilities	Inhibit the spheroid-forming capability of non-small cell lung CSCs	20
		―――	Anti-proliferative	mRNA expression of SOX2 (⭣), OCT3/4 (⭣)	55
		Colon cancer cells	Pro-apoptotic	mRNA and Protein expression levels of caspase-3 (⭡), caspase-8 (⭡), caspase-9 (⭡), Bax (⭡), Bcl-2 (⭣)	21
		Ovarian cancer cell	Pro-apoptotic	The expression of DR5 (⭡), FADD (⭡), Akt/NF-kB (⭣)	56, 57
		Colorectal and Prostate cancer cells	Pro-apoptotic	Accumulation of reactive oxygen species	56
		Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) cells	Anti-Epithelial-Mesenchymal-transition (EMT)	Wnt signaling (⭣), ZEB1 (⭣)	22
2	Ciprofloxacin	Melanoma cells	S-phase arrest	Topoisomerase II inhibition	33, 34
		Human non-small cell lung cancer	G2/M checkpoint arrest	The expression of p53 (⭡), p21 (⭡), cyclin B1 (⭣), Cdc2 (⭣)	35, 36
		―――	Disruption of mitochondrial membrane potential	Oligonucleosomal DNA fragmentation, p53 (⭡)	33
		Human triple-negative breast cancer MDA-MB-231 cells	Disruption of mitochondrial membrane potential	Bax/Bcl-2-dependent pathway (⭡)	34
3	Gemifloxacin	Human breast adenocarcinoma cells	Inhibit the Snail expression, the localization of Snail in cell nuclei (⭣)	The activation of NF-κB (⭣), TNF-α (⭣)	43
4	Doxorubicin	―――	Binds to small grooves in DNA fragments	Produces reactive oxygen species (ROS)	26
		―――	Trap topoisomerase II	DNA double-strand breakage, p53 (⭡)	27
		―――	Activation of various molecular signals from AMPK (⭡)	Bcl-2/Bax ratio (⭣)	27
5	Mitomycin	―――	G1-phase and early S-phase arrest	The synthesis of RNA and protein (⭣)	47
		―――	Form double or intra-strand cross-links DNA	Replication and Synthesis of DNA (⭣)	48

*Up-regulated (⭡). Down-regulated (⭣).